$Unique_ID{USH01155}
$Pretitle{103}
$Title{The Senate - 1789-1989
Chapter 11  The Compromise of 1850}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Byrd, Robert C.}
$Affiliation{US Senate}
$Subject{senate
compromise
senator
clay
slavery
calhoun
president
new
webster
union}
$Volume{Vol. 1}
$Date{1989}
$Log{No Compromise*0115501.scf
A Somber Webster*0115502.scf
Salvager of Compromise*0115503.scf
}
Book:        The Senate - 1789-1989
Author:      Byrd, Robert C.
Affiliation: US Senate
Volume:      Vol. 1
Date:        1989

Chapter 11  The Compromise of 1850

February 17, 1983

     Mr. President, one of the most famous artistic representations of the
United States Senate is Robert Whitechurch's engraving of Henry Clay
addressing the Senate during the debate over the Compromise of 1850.  I am
sure that most of my colleagues are familiar with this print.  It has appeared
in countless schoolbooks and schoolrooms where American history is taught.  A
copy hangs in the old Senate chamber just down the hall from us and another
hangs in one of my offices.  The engraving portrays Senator Clay in
mid-speech.  The galleries are filled with anxious onlookers.  On the floor,
we can see Thomas Hart Benton, Daniel Webster, William Seward, Stephen
Douglas, and John C. Calhoun, as well as the presiding officer, Vice President
Millard Fillmore.  These were the chief protagonists of one of the most
significant legislative debates in the Senate's history, a debate which is the
subject of my remarks today.

     In my most recent address, I discussed the Mexican War, which was
terminated in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  The war and the
peace treaty vastly expanded the size of the United States, adding new
territories from Texas to California; but neither the war nor the treaty
settled the question of how these territories would be organized.  "Free Soil"
supporters in the northern states opposed the spread of slavery into any of
the new territories; while supporters of slavery in the southern states
objected to any interference with the spread of their economic and social
system.  The administration of President James K. Polk advocated extending the
Missouri Compromise line, the thirty sixth parallel, across to the Pacific,
but the revival of this thirty-year-old compromise failed to appease either
side in the increasingly bitter slavery dispute.

     As the presidential election of 1848 approached, President Polk declined
to run for reelection.  His health was not good, and, indeed, he would die
just months after leaving the White House.  A major battle developed for the
Democratic nomination, the outcome of which helped shape the Democratic
response to the territorial issue.  Secretary of State James Buchanan
supported the administration's proposal to extend the Missouri Compromise
line.  Former President Martin Van Buren maneuvered for the nomination by
appealing to the Free Soilers.  Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan advocated a
policy of "popular sovereignty"; that is, of allowing the residents of the new
territories to decide for themselves whether to admit or prohibit slavery.  In
May 1848, the Democratic Convention nominated Senator Cass and, thus, in the
words of the distinguished historian David Potter, "made the equivocal policy
of popular sovereignty a party doctrine."

     Angered over the rejection of van Buren, a group of Democrats who were
centered in New York bolted from the Democratic party.  Called "barnburners"
by their opponents, these Free Soil Democrats joined with anti-slavery Whigs
and the remnants of the Liberty party to nominate Van Buren as an independent
candidate.  Seeking to build a new regional political coalition between the
North and the West, they based their party platform on complete support for
the Wilmot Proviso, which would ban slavery from any of the territories.
There was a good deal of historical irony in the barnburner movement of 1848,
since their candidate, Martin Van Buren, had been instrumental in building the
original North-South coalition of the Democratic party, a coalition that
depended upon northern Democrats accepting without question the "peculiar
institution" of the South.  Van Buren's conversion to the Free Soil movement
left many northern idealists unconvinced.  They considered him an opportunist
and could not support his candidacy, despite their agreement with his
platform.  Nevertheless, Van Buren's independent campaign split the Democratic
ranks, assured Senator Cass' defeat, and brought about the election of the
Whig candidate, General Zachary Taylor.

     As Glyndon Van Deusen, historian of the Whig party and its leaders, has
noted:  "The Whigs in 1848 had no platform and, apparently, no principles, for
as a party they failed to take a stand on the old Whig principles of bank,
tariff, and distribution.  They had only a candidate who would appeal to the
North as a hero and to the South as a slaveholder."  Southerners, indeed,
looked with approval upon the new Whig president, who was a Louisiana
slaveholder and father of Jefferson Davis' first wife.  But defenders of
slavery would soon discover that Zachary Taylor was a nationalist rather than
a sectionalist.  As president, he would place the Union above the interests of
his own region.

     General Taylor was a newcomer to politics.  He had never before voted and
had only identified himself with the Whig party at the time of his nomination
as its candidate.  Taylor, thus, had no claims to the loyalties of the Whigs
as did their longtime leaders Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.  Nor did Taylor
have any effective spokesmen in either the House or the Senate.  Instead, to
the horror of southerners - Whigs and Democrats alike - Taylor began to take
counsel from such anti-slavery Whigs as Senator William Seward of New York.

[See No Compromise: William Seward's stance against the Compromise of 1850 was
supported by northern Free Soilers and antislavery Whigs.]

     When the president's first annual message was presented to the
Thirty-first Congress on December 24, 1849, it contained his proposals to
settle the territorial issues by having California and New Mexico (an area
that, at that time, also included the present-day state of Arizona) apply
immediately for statehood.  They would thereby avoid going through a
territorial stage and would escape any renewal of the Wilmot Proviso
controversy.  The absence of slaveholders in those areas (for Mexico had
prohibited slavery in its territories) meant that both states would
undoubtedly enter the Union as free states by their own choice.  By leaving
the decision to the settlers themselves, rather than to the government in
Washington, President Taylor predicted that "all causes of uneasiness may be
avoided, and confidence and kind feeling preserved."

Rather than settle the territorial issue, however, Taylor's proposals only
fanned the fires further.  The inhabitants of California, many of whom were
'49ers who had flocked west in search of gold, had already approved a state
constitution that prohibited slavery; thus, its admission as a state would
break the equal division between free and slave states in the Senate.  The
southern press expressed its outrage as did southern political leaders.  On
January 3, 1850, Senator David Atchison presented the Senate with resolutions
passed by the Missouri legislature.  Among other items, these resolutions
stated:

That the Territories, acquired by the blood and treasure of the whole nation
ought to be governed for the common benefits of the citizens of all the
States; and any organization of the Territorial Governments excluding the
citizens of any part of the Union from removing to such Territories with their
property would be an exercise of power by Congress inconsistent with the
spirit upon which our federal compact was based, insulting to the sovereignty
and dignity of the States thus affected, calculated to alienate one portion of
the Union from another, and tending ultimately to disunion . . . .  That in
the event of the passage of any act conflicting with the principles herein
expressed, Missouri will be found in hearty cooperation with the slaveholding
States in such measures as may be deemed necessary for our mutual protection
against the encroachments of northern fanaticism.

     Immediately after these resolutions were read, Missouri's other senator,
Thomas Hart Benton, rose to his feet to object that they did not truly
represent the sentiments of his constituents.  "They are a law-abiding and a
Union-loving people," said Benton, and they had no intention of resisting the
Congress' legislative actions.

     That passions were equally strong on both sides of the slavery issue was
apparent from the Vermont resolutions, presented by Senator William Upham,
which insisted that "slavery is a crime against humanity, and a sore evil in
the body politic," and which Congress should ban from the western territories
and also the District of Columbia.  Southern senators objected to the printing
of the Vermont resolutions.  Said Florida's Senator David Yulee:

Now sir, slavery is an institution which the people I represent choose to
maintain . . . .  I consider that by receiving the communication of a State
containing offensive language to other members of the Union, we give our
sanction and approbation to it, so far as acquiescence will have this effect,
and that we thus encourage a course of crimination and recrimination,
producing a continual irritation between the States, which must be eventually
fatal to the Union.

     On January 16, 1850, Senator Henry S. Foote of Mississippi introduced an
omnibus bill to organize the western territories, including California, New
Mexico, and Deseret - a vast area extending from present-day Arizona and
Nevada to Utah, which was claimed by Mormon settlers.  Senator Foote's bill
also proposed cutting Texas into two states, thus increasing southern
representation in the Senate and mitigating the admission of California as a
free state.  On the same day, Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina reported
from the Judiciary Committee a bill to toughen regulations governing the
capture and return of fugitive slaves, an issue over which southern
slaveholders had become increasingly dissatisfied.  These territorial
proposals, together with northern demands for an end to slavery in the
District of Columbia and southern demands for a new fugitive slave law,
provided the major issues for debate in what we call the Compromise of 1850.

     The United States Senate served as the major arena for that compromise;
indeed, the House of Representatives was so bitterly divided that, for a long
time, it could not organize itself and elect its Speaker and other officers.
The House first met on December 3, 1849, but it was not until December 22,
after some sixty votes, that it elected Georgia Democrat Howell Cobb as its
Speaker.  During these weeks, the Senate bided its time, since Vice President
Fillmore ruled that the Senate could conduct no proceedings connected with
legislative business until both houses had been organized.  It was obvious
that if any solution to the problems of the nation was to be found, it would
be up to the Senate to take the lead.  Hope rested largely on one man:
Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky.  Harry of the West, who had dominated
legislative proceedings for so many years, returned to the Senate once again,
following his "retirement" in 1842.  Although defeated for president in 1844
and passed over for the nomination in 1848, Clay was still very much a leader
of the Whig party.  The first order of business in the Senate in the first
session of the Thirty-first Congress was the presentation of Senator Clay's
credentials.  Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun personally welcomed Clay back
to the Senate.  This was, in fact, the last Congress in which all three of
these giants would serve together.

     Surveying the turmoil in the House, the bullheadedness of the Taylor
administration, the array of proposals in the Senate, and the growing
divisions between North and South, Henry Clay was determined to shape a
compromise, as he had done thirty years earlier with the Missouri Compromise.
On a stormy winter's night, on January 21, 1850, Clay arrived unexpectedly at
the home of Daniel Webster.  That night, Clay outlined his plans and won
Webster's pledge of support.  Then, he sought out several southern senators.
"Eight days later," wrote his biographer, "Clay, weak in body but strong in
spirit, rose in the Senate chamber and began his last great struggle to save
the Union that he loved."

     Clearly and eloquently, Clay presented eight resolutions to deal with the
territorial and slavery issues.  California was to enter the Union as a free
state; the issue of slavery in New Mexico was to be left to its inhabitants;
the boundaries and debts of the state of Texas were to be settled; slavery
would be retained in the District of Columbia, but the slave trade there would
be prohibited; a more effective fugitive slave law would be enacted; and the
federal government would agree not to interfere with slavery where it already
existed.  This compromise, Clay believed, required no sacrifices on either
side.  "The plan is founded upon mutual forbearance," he said, "originating in
a spirit of conciliation and concession; not of principles, but of matters of
feelings."

     Concluding his remarks, Clay recounted the story of a visitor to his
lodgings that morning.  A week earlier, the Senate had taken up Clay's
resolutions to purchase both the manuscript copy of George Washington's
Farewell Address and the first president's estate at Mount Vernon.  The same
gentleman who had first presented Clay with the memorial for the government to
purchase Mount Vernon now returned and said, "Mr. Clay, I heard you make a
remark the other day which induces me to suppose that a precious relic in my
possession would be acceptable to you."  As Clay explained:

He then drew out of his pocket, and presented to me, the object which I now
hold in my hand.  And what, Mr. President, do you suppose it is?  It is a
fragment of the coffin of Washington - a fragment of that coffin in which now
repose in silence, in sleep, and speechless, all the earthly remains of the
venerated Father of his Country.  Was it portentous that it should have been
thus presented to me?  Was it a sad presage of what might happen to that
fabric which Washington's virtue, patriotism, and valor established?  No, sir,
no.  It was a warning voice, coming from the grave to the Congress now in
session to beware, to pause, to reflect before they lend themselves to any
purposes which shall destroy that Union which was cemented by his exertions
and example.

Thus, Clay finished his remarks, waving in the air the piece of George
Washington's coffin.

     On February 5, Clay further elaborated on his compromise plan in a long
speech to the Senate.  The aging senator had to be helped up the stairs to the
Senate chamber, but he delivered, nonetheless, a long and passionate address.
Baker Jamison, who was a Senate page in 1850, described Clay's speech that day
as "the most impressive scene in our political life."  From early in the
morning, crowds poured into the Capitol Rotunda and corridors outside the
Senate chamber.  As soon as the doors to the galleries were opened, people
packed into every available space.  A gallant senator moved that the ladies
crowded in the corridors be permitted admittance to the floor, and, according
to the young page, "the fair ones extricated themselves from the crush as best
they could and swarmed in like bees, taking every available spot, even
crowding between the desks of Senators."  At a side door to the chamber,
Jamison was besieged by a gentleman from Boston who offered ten dollars to be
let in to hear Senator Clay.  The page obliged but assures us in his memoirs
that he declined the money.  Thus, when Henry Clay rose to speak, he was
surrounded, not only by those senators portrayed in Whitechurch's engraving
but also by elegant ladies standing between the senators' desks, members of
the House of Representatives, cabinet secretaries, and diplomats in full
regalia.  It must have been quite a scene.

     "Mr. President, it is passion, passion - party, party - and intemperance;
that is all I dread," said Clay.  "All is now uproar, confusion, menace to the
existence of the Union . . . I implore Senators - I entreat them, by all that
they expect hereafter, and by all that is dear to them here below, to repress
the ardor of these passions, to look at their country in this crisis - to
listen to the voice of reason . . . in determining what is best to be done for
our country in the actual posture in which we find it."

Clay's speech went on in this fashion for two days.  "Mr. President," he
concluded, "I have said what I solemnly believe - that the dissolution of the
Union and war are identical and inseparable . . . .  Such a war, too, as that
would be, following the dissolution of the Union!  Sir, we may search the
pages of history, and none so furious, so bloody, so implacable, so
exterminating . . . was ever conducted."  Henry Clay spoke those words eleven
years before the outbreak of the Civil War.  Sadly, his prediction was
completely accurate.

     When the Senate began to debate Clay's resolutions, John C. Calhoun led
the opposition.  Senator Calhoun had not been present in the Senate chamber to
hear Henry Clay speak; instead, Calhoun was dangerously ill in his
boardinghouse room across from the Capitol.  He had suffered a severe attack
of pneumonia that winter, which weakened his already precarious health.  But,
having read Clay's speeches in the newspapers, Calhoun was determined to
respond.  Advance word of his address went out, and, on March 4, the galleries
again were packed with spectators, the Senate floor again filled with ladies,
diplomats, and members of the House.  A few minutes after twelve, Calhoun
entered the chamber.  As Charles Wiltse, one of Calhoun's biographers,
described him, "He was emaciated and feeble, his sallow cheeks sunken, his
long hair now almost white, his step short.  Only the brilliant, flashing eyes
and the grim, straight lips remained of the old Calhoun . . . .  The ghostlike
figure sank into his seat."  He had hoped to be able to deliver his own
remarks, but, acting on the advice of his friends, he had instead put his
remarks in writing to be read by the vigorous senior senator from Virginia,
James M. Mason.  The theme of Calhoun's remarks was, as he said, "the greatest
and gravest question that can ever come under your consideration - How can the
Union be preserved?"  Clay's compromise would not work, according to Calhoun.
The Union could only be saved by adopting measures to assure the southern
states that they could remain in the Union "consistently with their honor and
safety" Calhoun described the disadvantages that he saw to the South:  the
limitation of its economic expansion, the tariff that favored industrial goods
over agricultural goods, the northern attack on the institution of slavery.
The North had to do justice to the South, Calhoun insisted,

by conceding to the South an equal right in the acquired territory, and to do
her duty by causing the stipulations relative to fugitive slaves to be
faithfully fulfilled - to cease agitating the slave question, and to provide
for the insertion of a provision in the constitution, by an amendment, which
will restore to the South, in substance, the power she possessed of protecting
herself, before the equilibrium between the sections was destroyed by the
action of this Government.

This was a challenge to the Senate, to the North, and to the Union.

     As Senator Mason read Calhoun's words, according to the New York Herald,
Calhoun sat motionless in his chair, Webster was leaning forward intently,
Clay resting his hand upon his forehead, Benton sitting rigidly, Cass lolling
gloomily.  The younger members looked to Webster to reply to Calhoun, but the
God-like Daniel was not yet ready to make his own statement.  It was three
days later that Daniel Webster rose to deliver his "Seventh of March" speech,
perhaps the single most famous address ever given in the United States Senate.

     Generations of schoolchildren have memorized - at least, in the days when
schoolchildren were called upon to memorize anything - portions of Daniel
Webster's speech of March 7, 1850, particularly its opening lines:

Mr. President, I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a
northern man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United
States.  It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the United States; a body
not yet moved from its propriety, not lost to a just sense of its own dignity,
and its own high responsibilities, and a body to which the country looks with
confidence, for wise, moderate, patriotic, and healing counsels . . . I speak
today for the preservation of the Union.  Hear me for my cause.

These eloquent words were spoken to a chamber crowded with people.  The
Senate's principal clerk, Lewis Machen, wrote to his son this description of
the scene:

The Senate chamber and galleries were literally jammed.  Chairs from committee
rooms were placed throughout the Senate chamber wherever one could be stowed.
These and many of the seats of senators were occupied by ladies; and there
scarcely has ever been a higher tribute paid to intellect than the earnest and
fixed attention of the audience for three hours and a half.  The effect of the
speech has been conciliatory; and it is hoped that this will be the precursor
of an earnest attempt to bring pending differences to a practical and
favorable issue.

     Daniel Webster argued that the issues of slavery in the territories had
been already settled by history, law, and geography.  The South had long ago
recognized Congress' right to determine the status of slavery when it agreed
to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Missouri Compromise of 1820.  In
addition to the weight of history and federal law, the physical geography of
California and New Mexico would prevent the institution of slavery, which was
employed primarily in cotton and tobacco production, from ever spreading into
western mountainous and desert regions.  Further debate on slavery in the
territories, therefore, would be fruitless.  However, if southerners were to
concede the territorial issues, Webster went on, then northerners must
recognize other southern grievances.  Webster denounced the northern
abolitionist societies, whose agitations, he said, had "produced nothing good
or valuable."  He pledged not to introduce any further anti-slavery petitions
into the Senate and went on to call upon northerners to recognize their
constitutional obligation to facilitate the return of fugitive slaves to their
owners.  In taking this position, he displayed raw political courage.

     Webster concluded his remarks by denouncing the idea being promoted by
some southern "fire-breathers", that the Union could be peacefully disbanded.
"Secession!  Peaceable secession!" said Webster.  "Sir, your eyes and mine are
never destined to see that miracle.  The dismemberment of this vast country
without convulsion!  The breaking up of the fountains of the great deep
without ruffling the surface! . . .  There can be no such thing as peaceable
secession . . . I see that it must produce war."

     Webster's stand for the compromise brought him commendations from
northern and southern moderates but also violent abuse from northern
abolitionists and reformers, who denounced him for selling his soul to the
defense of slavery.  The poet John Greenleaf Whittier published his
denunciatory poem Ichabod, comparing Webster to a fallen angel.  In Webster's
home state, anti-slavery advocates formed vigilance committees to protect
runaway slaves from federal fugitive hunters.  It was clear that Webster had
misjudged the political sentiment in Massachusetts and had undermined much of
his own political support.

     With the three Senate giants having spoken, a relative newcomer to the
Senate added his own observations in opposition to Clay's compromise.  On
March 11, New York Senator William H. Seward called the compromise "radically
wrong and essentially vicious."  He shouted, "I am opposed to any such
compromise, in any and all the forms in which it has been proposed."  The
Senator from New York admitted that the United States Constitution recognized
slavery and protected it where it existed.  "But," he said, "there is a higher
law than the Constitution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and
devotes it to the same noble purposes.  The territory is a part - no
inconsiderable part - of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by
the Creator of the universe."

     Seward's "Higher Law" speech drew instant fire from the South.  For, if
the North was no longer going to abide by the essential compromise of the
Constitution, both the moderates and fire-breathers asked, then could the
Union survive?  Seward was considered a dangerous radical at the time -
although in his later political career he came to be seen as a moderate.  For
all his rhetorical - flashes, Senator Seward was personally well liked among
his colleagues.  The reporter Ben Perley Poore tells us that, while
Mississippi Senator Henry Foote made political capital by attacking Seward in
public, in private he was quite friendly and at ease with the New York
senator.

     Thus, the lines were drawn with southern hard-liners like Calhoun and
Jefferson Davis and northern radicals like Seward lined up against the
moderate compromise.  At the end of March, however, the anti-compromise forces
lost their most eminent leader when John C. Calhoun died in his Washington
boardinghouse room.  He had made one of his last appearances in the Senate for
Webster's "Seventh of March" speech.  At first, Webster did not see the frail
South Carolinian, wrapped in his cloak, in the crowded chamber that day and
referred to his absence in his speech.  "He is here," shouted another senator
to alert Webster.  Toward the end of Webster's remarks, Calhoun had engaged
him in a brief colloquy, during which Webster had said of the South Carolina
senator, "But, sir, the honorable member [Calhoun] did avow this object,
himself, openly, boldly and manfully; he did not disguise his conduct or his
motives."

     Mr. Calhoun:  Never, never.

     Mr. Webster:  What he means he is very apt to say.

     Mr. Calhoun:  Always, always.

     Mr. Webster:  And I honor him for it.

Calhoun returned to the Senate just once more on March 13.  At that time,
Senator Foote was defending his proposal for a special committee of thirteen
to study and report back to the Senate on the compromise.  During the debate,
Senator Cass of Michigan had attributed to Calhoun a policy of disunion.
Calhoun rose to claim he had been misunderstood; that his intention was to
save the Union, not to destroy it.  Calhoun insisted that he sought a cure to
the disease that afflicted the Union, while Cass and other supporters of the
compromise were proposing only palliatives.  Calhoun also denounced northern
anti-slavery advocates, most prominent among them Senator Seward of New York.
"I will not be on good terms with those who wish to cut my throat," he said.
"I recognize them as Senators - say good morning, and shake their hands with
them - but that is the extent of my intercourse with those who I think are
endangering the Union."  These characteristically unbending words were the
last that John C. Calhoun spoke on the Senate floor.  Back at his room,
Calhoun's health deteriorated rapidly.  Surrounded by his supporters, who
attended to his needs, the South Carolina senator told them, "If I could have
but one hour to speak in the Senate, I could do more good than on any previous
occasion of my life."  But such was not to be the case; Calhoun died on
March 31.

     "No more shall we witness from yonder seat the flashes of that keen and
penetrating eye of his, darting through this chamber," said Senator Henry
Clay.  "No more shall we behold that torrent of clear, concise, compact logic,
poured out from his lips, which, if it did not always carry conviction to our
judgment, commanded our great admiration."

     Mr. President, it is quite poignant to read the tributes of Henry Clay,
Daniel Webster, and other senators to their fallen colleague, a man whom they
recognized as a giant in his time.  However, it must also be said that
Calhoun's death facilitated the passage of the Compromise of 1850, removing,
as it did, the most eloquent and forceful opponent of the measure.  Funeral
services for Calhoun were held in the Senate chamber on April 2 with Vice
President Fillmore presiding, and the Speaker of the House, Howell Cobb, and
the president of the United States, Zachary Taylor, leading the distinguished
gathering of mourners.  Senators Clay, Webster, Cass, Willie Mangum, William
King, and John Berrien served as pallbearers, and the Senate chaplain, the
Reverend C. M. Butler, delivered the sermon.  Afterwards, the entire Senate
accompanied the body to Congressional Cemetery, at the Anacostia River end of
Pennsylvania Avenue here in Washington, for its temporary interment.

     Afterwards, the Senate resumed its deliberations on the compromise,
specifically on Senator Foote's resolution to create a special committee of
thirteen.  Among the chief opponents of this resolution was Thomas Hart Benton
of Missouri, the Magnificent Missourian, to whom I have so often referred in
the past.  Benton announced that he supported the admission of California as a
state but opposed its being mixed in with the other provisions of the
compromise.  The South's fears against congressional interference with slavery
were unjustified, said Benton.  He pointed out that slaves as property were
estimated to be worth a billion dollars, but that the Congress had never acted
to tax this property.  Why then expect Congress "to commit flagrant violations
of the Constitution, to harass or destroy slave property?"

     Benton's biographer, Professor E. B. Smith, has written that "throughout
the debates Foote did everything possible to provoke Benton into a physical
attack or duel."  Senator Foote was a tiny man with a large voice and sharp
tongue, who excelled in debate but often demonstrated disregard for senatorial
courtesy.  The verbal sparring between Benton and Foote became so intense that
Vice President Fillmore took the occasion to reverse a long-standing
precedent.  Fillmore noted that since the days when John C. Calhoun was vice
president, the presiding officer had not attempted to call an unruly senator
to order, assuming that some complaint must first come from another senator.
But the vice president now insisted that he should intervene to preserve
decorum in the Senate, and the members of the Senate agreed wholeheartedly.

     On April 17, Benton was discussing his amendment to prevent creation of
the special committee to consider abolition.  By proclaiming that it lacked
the power to touch slavery, said Benton, Congress would prove that the country
was "alarmed without reason, and against reason" over the whole slavery issue,
and that it did not intend "to aggress against the South."  Foote then accused
Benton of having indirectly attacked the late Senator Calhoun.  This taunt
proved too much for the hulky, bearlike Senator Benton who began to move
ominously towards the diminutive senator from Mississippi.  Let me here read
the description of the event as recorded by the reporter of debates:

Here, Mr. Foote, who occupies a seat on the outer circle, in front of the Vice
President's chair, retreated backwards down the aisle, towards the chair of
the Vice President, with a pistol in his hand; Mr. Benton, a moment before,
having suddenly risen from his seat and advanced by the aisle, outside the
bar, towards him, following him into the aisle down which the Senator from
Mississippi had retreated.  In a moment almost every Senator was on his feet,
and calls to "order;" demands for the Sergeant-at-Arms; requests that Senators
would take their seats, from the Chair and from individual Senators, were
repeatedly made.  Mr. Benton was followed and arrested by Mr. Dodge, of
Wisconsin, and, in the confusion and excitement which prevailed, he was heard
to exclaim, from time to time:  "I have no pistols!" "Let him fire!" "Stand
out of the way!" "I have no pistols!" "I disdain to carry arms!" "Stand out of
the way, and let the assassin fire!"  While making these exclamations, Mr.
Benton was brought back to his seat; but, breaking away from Mr. Dodge, of
Wisconsin, who sought forcibly to detain him, he advanced again towards Mr.
Foote, who stood near the Vice President's chair, on the right-hand side,
surrounded by a number of Senators and others not members of the Senate.  Mr.
Dickinson took the pistol from the hand of Mr. Foote, and locked it up in his
desk, and Mr. Foote, on the advice of Mr. Butler, returned to his seat.

     Mr. President, it is sad testimony, indeed, to the violence and
turbulence of that era, to the divisions in the nation, and to the dangers to
the Union that one member of the Senate felt compelled to draw a pistol
against another senator on the Senate floor.  A committee of inquiry
investigated the matter, chided senator Foote for indulging in personalities
in debate, but did not recommend any punishment for him.  As Professor Smith
has noted:

Though Foote went unpunished, the adverse publicity, and perhaps the proof
that Benton could be pushed too far, put a damper on his tongue, and formal
exchanges between the two became relatively civil.  Benton's only revenge, if
such it could be called, was literary.  When Foote later announced that he
would write a little book in which Benton would play a major role, Benton sent
word that he would write a very big book in which Foote would have no part
whatever.  Each kept his word.

     On April 18, the day after the Benton-Foote conflict, the Senate passed
Foote's resolution by a vote of 30 to 22 and set up the Select Committee of
Thirteen.  Seven Whigs and six Democrats were appointed, but the real work of
the committee - the preparation of its report - appears to have been entirely
the product of its chairman, Henry Clay.  On May 8, when the committee's
report was presented to the Senate, it was substantially the same omnibus
proposal that Clay had first introduced in January.  Again, Henry Clay rose to
defend his compromise; again, the opposition responded.  Some urged the
Kentuckian to break his omnibus bill into separate sections to at least enact
some parts, but Clay persisted.  The debate moved from April through May and
June.  Washington's weather turned hot, and some senators asked for a week's
adjournment so that the heavy carpets and draperies could be removed from the
chamber to cool things off; but Clay remained stubbornly opposed and pushed
the Senate into debate daily, even moving the meeting time forward to eleven
each morning rather than the customary noon hour.  Not until the end of June
were the carpets and draperies replaced with the light summer matting.

     Outside Washington, there were ominous rumblings.  On June 3, delegates
from nine southern states met in Nashville, where they discussed means of
uniting the South.  Disunion was in the air.  The southern "fire-eaters"
believed that slavery would never be safe so long as the South remained in the
Union, and urged secession.  Clay's resolution took some of the steam out of
the Nashville Convention, for it seemed clear that the Senate was leaning
towards a compromise that would protect slavery where it existed.  The
Nashville Convention passed a number of resolutions, endorsed the Missouri
Compromise, and then disbanded.  It was, however, a clear forerunner of the
secession movement that would take place ten years later.

     Attacks on Clay's compromise continued in the Senate.  During the month
of June, historian Holman Hamilton noted, sixteen senators made twenty-eight
attempts to amend sections of the omnibus bill.  Six of these amendments were
successful.  These amendments suggested that Clay was steadily losing his
support, and his omnibus bill was becoming desperately stalemated.  One reason
for the failure to reach accommodation was the increasing hostility of the
Taylor administration to the compromise.  The president made it clear that he
intended to promote statehood for New Mexico no matter what Clay and other
Whigs were doing in Congress.  But, once again, death changed the course of
history and claimed another opponent to the compromise.  On July 4, 1850,
President Taylor became ill after attending ceremonies at the Washington
Monument construction site.  Five days later, he died.  Vice President Millard
Fillmore became president.  Fillmore, a northern Whig, was popular in Congress
and appeared to be in sympathy with the omnibus bill.

     On July 22, Henry Clay, who spoke some seventy times for his compromise,
delivered his last major address on the subject.  The nation and its purpose
were greater than any individual man, said Clay.  "What if, in the march of
this nation to greatness and power, we should be buried beneath the wheels
that propel it onward?  What are we - what is any man worth who is not ready
and willing to sacrifice himself for the benefit of his country when it is
necessary?"  A week later, the omnibus bill came up for a vote in the Senate.
At the last minute, however, supporters of the compromise made several hasty
revisions to try to win additional southern votes.  The move was a mistake,
for it frightened northern moderates who saw too many concessions being made.
On July 31, Senator James Pearce of Maryland, who was managing the bill on the
floor, moved to strike out the whole section relating to New Mexico.  Pearce
wanted to remove an amendment affecting the boundary claims between Texas and
New Mexico but, having won this deletion, found himself outvoted when he
introduced amendments to reinstate the Texas boundary and New Mexico
territorial government provisions.  Then, opponents of the compromise rallied
their forces to defeat the key section for admission of California.  Clay's
whole scheme had depended upon voting on the bill as a package, so that
neither the North nor the South would fear that the other might gain a
last-minute advantage.  Pearce's ill-timed move had upset Clay's precaution
and derailed his compromise.  Thus, after six months of feverish work, Henry
Clay stood defeated.  Dejected and worn out, Clay left for a vacation,
absenting himself from the Senate for the rest of the summer.

     "The omnibus is overturned," said Thomas Hart Benton, "and all the
passengers spilled out."  Calhoun was dead, Clay was off sulking, and Webster
had resigned from the Senate to become secretary of state in President
Fillmore's cabinet.  The time had come for a new generation of senators to
take the leadership.  The most prominent among them was Stephen Douglas of
Illinois.  As chairman of the Committee on Territories, Douglas had been
actively involved in the debate over the compromise but had remained
independent of Clay's plan, even refusing a seat on the Committee of Thirteen.
Douglas never had much hope for the passage of the omnibus bill.  As he wrote
to a friend, "By combining the measures into one Bill the Committee united the
opponents of each measure instead of securing the friends of each.  I have
thought from the beginning that they made a mistake in this respect."

     Douglas took a different approach from Clay.  Instead of introducing the
compromise as a whole, he would tackle each section separately.  First, he
shepherded the Utah territorial bill to passage in the "precise words" that he
wrote it.  The California statehood bill came up and passed on August 13.
Douglas also worked with the luckless Senator Pearce to prepare a new bill on
the Texas boundary line.  As soon as one section passed, Douglas brought up
the next:  Utah, Texas, California, New Mexico - each territorial issue was
finally settled.  Just two weeks after Clay's omnibus bill had "overturned,"
Douglas had hoisted it aright and enacted its various parts.  Not for nothing
would the short and stocky Senator Douglas win the title of Little Giant.

     Stephen Douglas succeeded where Henry Clay had failed because he was
shrewd, skillful, and a Democrat.  Clay had proved unable to hold together the
Whig ranks behind his compromise and needed Democratic support to enact his
program.  Douglas appealed to broader support from Democratic senators, but he
looked not to fashioning one large majority; instead, he patched together a
series of ad hoc majorities to pass each of the compromise's various sections.
Professor David Potter captured the shifting political tides in the Senate at
this time:

Douglas was astute enough to recognize that there was no workable majority in
favor of compromise.  But there were strong sectional blocs, in some cases
northern, in others southern, in favor of each of the measures separately, and
there was a bloc in favor of compromise.  This compromise bloc, voting first
with one sectional bloc and then with the other, could form majorities for
each of the measures, and all of them could thus been acted.

     By September 1850, the Senate and House had completed work on the
compromise.  California was admitted as a free state, Deseret and New Mexico
would remain territories, the slave trade was abolished in the District of
Columbia, while a tough fugitive slave law went into effect.  President
Millard Fillmore lent support to the package and signed the measures that
Congress had sent him.  Thus it is, that the famous Whitechurch engraving is
incorrect or, at least, misleading.  The Compromise of 1850 was more the
result of Stephen Douglas' legislative shrewdness than of Henry Clay's
leadership.

     The Compromise of 1850 was the last hurrah for the Senate's Big Three.
Within two years, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster would follow John C. Calhoun
in death.  Their beloved Whig party would not survive the decade.  Voting in
the Senate on the compromise had revealed the sectional divisions of that
party.  Ninety percent of the northern Whigs in the Senate had opposed the
compromise, while 80 percent of the southern Whigs supported it.  As Professor
Van Deusen has noted, "Division over slavery had become so pronounced in the
House that anything like Whig party unity ceased to exist."  Northern and
southern Whigs began to distrust each other deeply, and some southern Whig
leaders seceded from the party to form the new Constitutional Union party,
which became strong in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida.  Never
again did the Whig party control a majority in either house of Congress.
Never again did it elect a president.  By 1860, most southern Whigs had become
Democrats, and most northern Whigs had become Republicans, although political
divisions are never completely clear-cut.

[See A Somber Webster: This rare daguerreotype of Daniel Webster, made by
Matthew Brady around 1850 and copied on a glass plate negative, captured the
Massachusetts senator in a somber mood.]

     How, then, do we assess the Compromise of 1850?  Knowing, as we do, that
the Civil War broke out a decade later, the compromise obviously did not
succeed in its most important objective:  to hold the nation together.
Tensions in the Senate increased, rather than abated, during the years after
the compromise.  Symbolically, when Daniel Webster, supporter of the
compromise, left the Senate, Charles Sumner, an avid anti-slavery and
anticompromise man, was elected to his seat.  During the 1850's, sectional
differences became polarized in the Senate, with men like Sumner increasingly
speaking for the North, and men like Jefferson Davis speaking for the South.

     As for the territorial issue, Senator Salmon Chase of Ohio correctly
noted, "The question of slavery in the territories has been avoided.  It has
not been settled."  Only the fate of California was sure; it was not at all
certain whether the remaining territories would be admitted as slave or free
states.  Indeed, in just four years, the territorial question would explode
again with even more devastating force, and the agent of that explosion would
be the very man who assured passage of the Compromise of 1850, Stephen
Douglas.  In addition, the new fugitive slave law would create great moral
indignation in the North, as federal agents sought slaves who had escaped to
freedom.  Two years later, the Washington newspaper National Era would begin
serializing a novel inspired by the Fugitive Slave Act.  That book, Uncle
Tom's Cabin, became perhaps the most influential novel in American history,
helping to galvanize northern opposition to slavery and southern distrust of
the North.

[See Salvager of Compromise: The pragmatic Senator Stephen A. Douglas salvaged
Henry Clay`s compromise through skillful legislative maneuvering.]

     Mr. President, looking back through history, we recognize the failures of
the compromise in ways that its authors could never have predicted.
Nonetheless, we owe these senators soee credit.  They were fulfilling their
responsibilities as political leaders to seek a reasonable accommodation of
all sides and a peaceful settlement of a highly inflamed issue.  Perhaps the
issues of slavery and anti-slavery were too fundamental and deep-rooted for
political solutions, but, considering the alternative of civil war, it was
certainly worth every effort of the senators in that long and arduous first
session of the Thirty-first Congress to try to prevent it.  Perhaps the
greatest credit we can give them is to note that the Civil War began in 1861
rather than 1851; for, if the war had broken out during the 1850's, when such
weak reeds as Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan occupied the White House, and
when public opinion in the North was still divided over the slavery issue, we
might today be two nations rather than one.  The Compromise of 1850, at least,
bought time.